When it comes to taking care of your home, chances are that you want to make sure everything looks good. There are plenty of ways to do this, but one of the biggest differences you can make is dusting your house regularly. This goes especially for furniture, which is a huge source of dust in houses. Thankfully, there are also ways that you can prevent dust from getting onto the furniture as well.
Before you can get to preventing dust from settling on your furniture, there are a few things you will need to keep in mind. For one, different types of furniture are going to interact with dust differently. The method for cleaning these pieces of furniture is also going to be considerably different as well. Making sure you know how to clean your furniture is going to be your first step.
There are three main types of furniture that you will need to know about before you can start preventing dust from building up: leather, wood, and upholstery. The fibers on upholstery tend to lock in dust particles, while leather’s delicate nature needs to be taken into account. Wood might not be fragile, but it certainly needs some special care if you want to keep it looking good.
How to Dust Wooden Furniture
Wooden furniture is a little bit particular because of its smooth surface, but somewhat delicate materials. Unfortunately, there is no way to completely remove dust from any environment, there are still plenty of things that you can do to make sure that it doesn’t build up more than it should.
One of the most efficient ways to remove dust is to run the vacuum cleaner as much as you can as opposed to the broom. The vacuum cleaner is going to do a much better job at actually removing the dust from the environment, rather than spreading it around and dissipating it. If you do use this method to remove dust, you will want to make sure that the vacuum cleaner you are using has a HEPA filter attached to it.
When you are individually dusting each piece of furniture, you will want to make sure that you are using a clean cloth, and that you never, ever use a feather duster. Clean cloth, made from an absorbent material, is going to pick up the dust particles and remove them from the wood instead of just spreading them around like feather dusters do. For better results, you can make sure that the cloth is slightly damp as well.
Once you are done dusting, you might want to consider rubbing a used dryer sheet over the wooden furniture. The fabric softener in this dryer sheet is going to help deter the dust particles from sticking to the wood, giving the illusion that there is absolutely no dust in the environment.
If you want to make sure that your wooden furniture stays looking good, then these are the best ways that you can get the job done in both a quick and a timely manner.
How to Remove Dust from Upholstery
Upholstery can be extremely problematic when it comes to dust and trying to make sure that you live in a dust-free home. Because of the fibers that upholstery has, the dust particles tend to get locked into place, making it harder to remove the dust itself. Regardless, there are still ways that you can work around this particular problem.
First things first, you are going to want to read the label of your upholstery. If you no longer have the label, there’s a good chance that you will be able to find it online. At least having the label on-hand will make the following steps much easier to complete successfully.
You can brush away excess dust with a stiff brush. This will not necessarily remove the dust from the environment, unfortunately. However, it will make sure that your couch is free from dust for the time being, while you work on the rest of the steps.
Here’s where the fun part comes in. You are going to want to use some baking soda to remove the embedded dust and dirt from your couch. While this is most commonly used for stain removal, smaller amounts of baking soda will do perfectly well to give your couch a deeper cleaning than you would otherwise be able to give. Remember that you should always test the baking soda out on a small spot of the couch before you do anything major with it.
Using Baking Soda to Get Rid of Dust
Using baking soda to get rid of the dust on your couch is a relatively simple process. You are going to need baking soda, obviously, a vacuum cleaner, cleaning cloth, and a brush attachment for the vacuum.
To begin, you will want to sprinkle the couch with the baking soda, letting it sit for no more than 30 minutes at a time. If you are aiming for an extremely deep clean, you can cautiously add a dry carpet cleaner to the mix. This will help produce better results if you are also fighting stains as well as dust.
Once the allotted time has passed, you will want to take the brush attachment on the vacuum and remove the baking soda from your couch. This is arguably the easiest part of the job, and the results will be noticeable as soon as you finish the job vacuuming. This should easily remove any and all dirt that has intertwined itself with the fibers of your upholstery.
How to Clean Dust from Leather Furniture
Making sure that your leather furniture remains dust-free is a bit more problematic. For all of its beauty, leather furniture has a much higher need for maintenance and upkeep, as well as special products that won’t harm the leather itself. Thankfully, the solution to cleaning leather furniture is going to be one of the simplest ones that you can imagine.
The truth is, you can easily de-dust your leather furniture using a vacuum. All you really need to do is run the vacuum over the leather, assuming that you have an appropriate brush attachment. Remember that when you are vacuuming a couch that you will always want to get between the cushions.
Once you are done vacuuming the couch, you will want to wipe down the entire thing with a proper dust cloth. This ensures that any lingering dust is removed from the couch and your couch is looking as good as new again. Generally, a dust cloth refers to a cloth that can actually absorb the dust, rather than just spread it around. A good example would be a pure cotton cloth, or a microfiber cloth.
When you use the cloth over the couch, you will want to properly inspect the couch to make sure that you got rid of all the bits of dust that your eyes can see. This will also give you a good idea on the condition of the couch, and if there are any areas in the leather that need to have some improvement done. This should be part of your routine care for your leather furniture, but it can be done more often if you live in an environment that is particularly prone to dust.
